I suspect you're correct, on both counts. Which is unfortunate. Unreliable appearance and click-throughi comments/comment splitting in the friends list of LJ friends is a significant barrier to switching, as it means migration does mean partly departing the LJ community.

I'm curious how they're implementing their reading list so it works seamlessly in the other direction, and whether LJ will accept that patch. It's kind of hard to say, "Hey, LJ, take this patch so I can leave you and stop being a free user burden, while still contributing to your community so it encourages paid users to stick around/new people to become paid users."